Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 22 January 1840) was a

German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He was one of the

first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history. His teachings
in comparative anatomy were applied to the classification of what he called human
races, of which he determined there to be five.
In eighteenth century Germany, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach studied how
individuals within a species vary, and to explain such variations, he proposed that a
force operates on organisms as they develop. Blumenbach used metrical methods to
study the history of humans, but he was also a natural historian and theorist.
Blumenbach argued for theories of the transformation of species, or the claim that
new species can develop from existing forms. His theory of Bildungstrieb (formative drive), a developmental force within
all organisms, influenced the conceptual debates among many late nineteenth and early twentieth century embryologists
and naturalists.
Blumenbach was born 11 May 1752 in Gotha, Germany. His mother, Charlotte Eleonore Hedwig Buddeus, was the
daughter of a high-ranking official in Gotha's government. Blumenbach's father, Heinrich Blumenbach, was the assistant
headmaster at the local gymnasium, or primary school. Blumenbach completed his early education in Gotha, graduating
from the gymnasium in 1769. After graduation, he attended the University of Jena, in Jena, Germany, before moving to
the University of Gttingen, in Gttingen, Germany. While a student at the University of Gttingen, Blumenbach studied
with naturalist Christian W. Bttner. Bttner taught Blumenbach via his lectures on exotic cultures and peoples, and he
encouraged Blumenbach to write his dissertation on such communities.
In 1775 Blumenbach received his medical degree from the University of Gttingen after completing his dissertation, "De
Generis Humani Varietate Native Liber" ("On the Natural Varieties of Mankind"). This text showed that the variations
that exist in the human form do not represent differences between human species. In his dissertation, he also introduced
the term Caucasian as a term for white Europeans. Blumenbach's dissertation is an early demonstration of comparative
anatomy to objectively study human history. While earlier scholars, like Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, in
France, had created classifications of humans, they based their works largely on subjective behavioral characteristics and
cultural biases. Blumenbach argued that there are five distinct races of mankind within a single species, a conclusion he
derived from detailed studies of skulls and human anatomy. Although Blumenbach recognized distinct races, he also
believed in the unity of the human species, and he combated the use of anthropology as a means to promote
discrimination.
Following the publication of his dissertation, Blumenbach became curator of the natural history collection at the
University of Gttingen. In 1778 he became a professor of medicine and married the daughter of an administrator at the
university. The following year, Blumenbach published Handbuch der Naturgeschichte (Handbook of Natural History), in
which he evaluated morphological and ecological evidence from which he created a system to classify organisms.
Blumenbach believed that the Linnaean system of classification, developed by Carl Linnaeus in the 1735 text Systema
Naturae, published while Linnaeus was in the Netherlands, defined species on the basis of single, often arbitrarily chosen,
characteristics, a practice that many thought produced artificial groups that did not accurately reflect nature. Blumenbach
hoped to correct these supposed problems with the Linnaean system by defining species based on a series of
morphological characters, which he presented in his Handbuch. He also recognized the potential for species to change
through time or to become extinct. Blumenbach later expanded on those topics in his Beitrge zur
Naturgeschichte (Contributions to Natural History), in which he further investigated individual variability and the
possibility that the Earth had a long history.
In 1780 Blumenbach presented his concept of Bildungstrieb, or the formative force, an idea that influenced many in an
embryological debate of his time and that affected developmental research and natural philosophy for more than a
century. In his paper, "ber den Bildungstrieb (Nisus Formativus) und Seinen Einfluss auf die Generation und
Reproduktion" ("On the Formative Force and its Influence on Generation and Reproduction") Blumenbach
described Bildungstrieb as a force within all organisms that operated on their bodies throughout development in order to
give rise to their final forms.


Blumenbach's Bildungstrieb concept influenced the debate between preformationists and epigenesists, as it attacked the
assumptions underlying preformationism. According to preformationism, an organism existed fully formed within
the egg or sperm (germ cell), and the process of development was one of the animal unfolding, or growing, from its
miniature germinal form to more mature and adult forms. Many scholars, such as Albrecht von Haller, in Switzerland,
Marcello Malpighi, in Italy, and Jan Swammerdam, in the Netherlands, believed that some form of preformationism best
explained development. On the other hand, according to epigenesis, each embryo generated anew by gradually developing
from unorganized materials, a theory supported by the Caspar Friedrich Wolff, in Russia. Previous authors, such as Wolff,
had offered notions similar to Bildungstrieb, of vital forces that shaped the body. However, Blumenbach's concept went
beyond those offered by other scholars, as it reinforced the arguments for epigenesis. He provided a framework for
understanding a force for development that was both teleological, in that it acted towards a final form, and constitutive, in
that it could organize development.
Blumenbach applied his Bildungstrieb concept in his following works and various scholars utilized his concept. In the
second edition of On the Natural Varieties of Mankind, Blumenbach used Bildungstrieb to explain the degeneration of an
original type of human into the five varietieswhich he later classified as Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian,
and Americanfound around the world. In Contributions to Natural History, published in 1790, Blumenbach described
how Bildungstrieb operated after the Biblical flood to produce new species. The concept was adopted by the writer and
natural philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Germany, and the philosopher Immanuel Kant in Prussia. Nearly one
hundred years after Blumenbach's formulation of the concept, Ernst Haeckel, the chair of zoology at the University of
Jena, employed Bildungstrieb as the foundation of his theories on individual developmenttheories which influenced
embryological research well into the twentieth century.
Blumenbach participated in more than seventy academies and scientific organizations, and he continued to teach at the
University of Gttingen during his later years. His textbook, Handbuch der Vergleichenden Anatomie (Handbook of
Comparative Anatomy), published in 1805, influenced many throughout the history of comparative anatomy. In 1816
Blumenbach earned the appointment professor primarius of the Faculty of Medicine. Throughout his tenure at Gttingen,
Blumenbach taught many students, such as the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, and the early proponent
of recapitulation theory, Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer. An active naturalist throughout life, Blumenbach was among the first
to describe the wooly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, and he helped name the platypus, Ornithorhynchus anatinus.
He helped turn the natural history collection at the University of Gttingen into one of the first anthropological museums
in the world, as he amassed and catalogued skulls, hair, skins, casts, and pictures from places around the world. When
Blumenbach was appointed curator in 1776, the collection housed 85 skulls; when he died on 22 January 1840, the
collection had grown to 245 skulls with detailed accounts of their origin. Blumenbach's skull collection, including the
skulls that formed the basis of his dissertation and his theory of the five varieties of human, persisted at the University of
Gttingen into the twenty-first century.
- See more at: http://embryo.asu.edu/pages/johann-friedrich-blumenbach-1752-1840#sthash.ivjEpRbH.dpuf
Career
He was appointed extraordinary professor of medicine and inspector of the museum of natural history in Gttingen in
1776 and ordinary professor in 1778. He soon began to enrich the pages of the Medicinische Bibliothek, of which he was
editor from 1780 to 1794, with various contributions on medicine, physiology, and anatomy. In physiology, he was of the
school of Haller, and was in the habit of illustrating his theory by a careful comparison of the animal functions of man
with those of other animals.His reputation was much extended by the publication of his Institutiones
Physiologicae (1787), a condensed, well-arranged view of the animal functions, expounded without discussion of minute
anatomical details. Between its first publication and 1821, it went through many editions in Germany, where it was the
general textbook of the science. It was translated into English in America by Caldwell in 1798, and in London by
Elliotson in 1807.
He was perhaps still more extensively known by his Handbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie (Handbook of comparative
anatomy), of which the German editions were numerous, from its appearance in 1805 to 1824. It was translated into
English in 1809 by the surgeon Lawrence, and again, with the latest improvements and editions, by Coulson in 1827. This
manual, though slighter than the subsequent works of Cuvier, Carus, and others, and not to be compared with such later


expositions as that of Gegenbaur, was long esteemed for the accuracy of the author's own observations, and his just
appreciation of the labors of his predecessors.
Although the greatest part of Blumenbach's life was passed at Gttingen, in 1789 he visited Switzerland, and gave a
curious medical topography of that country in the Bibliothek. He was in England in 1788 and 1792. He was elected a
Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1794. In 1812 he was appointed secretary
to the Royal Society of Sciences at Gttingen, in 1816 was appointed physician to the royal family
in Hanover (German: Obermedizinalrat) by the prince regent, in 1821 was made a knight-commander of the Guelphic
Order, and in 1831 was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. In celebration of his doctoral jubilee
(1825) traveling scholarships were founded to assist talented young physicians and naturalists. In 1813, he was elected a
foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1835 he retired. Blumenbach died in Gttingen in 1840.
Beliefs on races

Blumenbach's five races.
Blumenbach's work included his description of sixty human crania (skulls) published originally in fascicules as Decas
craniorum (Gttingen, 17901828). This was a founding work for other scientists in the field of craniometry. He divided
the human species into five races in 1779, later founded on crania research (description of human skulls), and called them
(1793/1795):
the Caucasian or white race
the Mongolian or yellow race, including all East Asians and some Central Asians.
the Malayan or brown race, including Southeast Asian and Pacific Islanders.
the Ethiopian or black race, including sub-Saharan Africans.
the American or red race, including American Indians.
Further anatomical study led him to the conclusion that 'individual Africans differ as much, or even more, from other
individual Africans as Europeans differ from Europeans'.
Blumenbach argued that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., depended on geography, diet, and
mannerism. Like other monogenists such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, Blumenbach held to the
"degenerative hypothesis" of racial origins. Blumenbach claimed that Adam and Eve were Caucasian (Georgian)
inhabitants of Asia, (see Asia hypothesis), and that other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors
such as the sun and poor diet. Thus, he claimed, Negroid pigmentation arose because of the result of the heat of the
tropical sun, while the cold wind caused the tawny colour of the Eskimos, while the Chinese were fair-skinned compared
to the other Asian stocks because they kept mostly in towns protected from environmental factors. He believed that the
degeneration could be reversed in a proper environmental control and that all contemporary forms of man could revert to
the original Caucasian race.
Furthermore, he concluded that Africans were not inferior to the rest of mankind 'concerning healthy faculties of
understanding, excellent natural talents and mental capacities', and is quoted as saying the following:
"Finally, I am of opinion that after all these numerous instances I have brought together of negroes of capacity, it would
not be difficult to mention entire well-known provinces of Europe, from out of which you would not easily expect to
obtain off-hand such good authors, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the Paris Academy; and on the other hand,
there is no so-called savage nation known under the sun which has so much distinguished itself by such examples of
perfectibility and original capacity for scientific culture, and thereby attached itself so closely to the most civilized nations
of the earth, as the Negro."
He did not consider his "degenerative hypothesis" as racist and sharply criticized Christoph Meiners, an early practitioner
of scientific racialism, as well as Samuel Thomas von Smmerring who concluded from autopsies that Africans were an
inferior race. Blumenbach wrote three other essays stating non-white peoples are capable of excelling in arts and sciences
in reaction against racialists of his time.
These ideas were far less influential. His ideas were adopted by other researchers and encouraged scientific
racism. Blumenbach's work was used by many biologists and comparative anatomists in the nineteenth century who were
interested in the origin of races, including Wells, Lawrence, Prichard, Huxley and William Flower.



Expanding on the work of Carolus Linnaeus, German professor
of medicine Johann Friedrich Blumenbach introduced one of the
race-based classifications inOn the Natural Variety of Mankind.
In the second edition Blumenbach changed his original
geographically based four-race arrangement to a five-group one
that emphasized physical morphology (the study of the form of
an organism). Blumenbachs five categories were: Caucasian, the
white race; Mongolian, the yellow race; Malayan, the brown
race; Ethiopian, the black race; and American, the red race.
Although he retained geographical names for his categories, the
change marked a shift from geography to physical appearance.

Blumenbachs Significance
On July 4, 1776 a group of men met in Philadelphia and promulgated a document that would become the foundation of a
new country based on universal rights: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are, the pursuit of life, liberty, and
happiness. At precisely the same time, a young German student from the University of Gttingen had just published his
doctoral thesis entitled De generis humani varietate nativa (first published in English in with the title On the Natural
Varieties of Mankind). Though very different in their nature and intent, both texts can be regarded as embodying key
values of the European Enlightenment, the most important being the general, universal applicability to all mankind.

When J. F. Blumenbach, Professor of Medicine in the University of Gottingen died in the opening month of 1840 he had
enjoyed for half-a-century a fame such as has fallen to the lot of few men of science. The rising young anthropologists of
England--James Cowles Prichard and William Lawrence-modelled their methods on his and dedicated their books to him;
Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society opened his portfolios and cabinets to him and made him gifts; the Royal
Princes of England were sent to Gottingen to listen to his lectures; the Princes of multi-state Germany vied with each
other to do him honour ; Gottingen made him free of municipal taxes ; his university which he served for 65 years,
worshipped him; learned people from all countries of the world crowded his lecture theatre ; seventy-eight learned
societies were proud to have his name on their honorary list; new species of animals and plants were named after him.
Famous explorers offered him the best of their treasures.

Recent scholarly literature on Johann Friedrich Blumenbach has focused on the role he played in developing the
scientific concept of race in the late 18th century. In so doing, his dissertation On the Natural Variety of
Mankind becomes a key foundational text in the history of European race and racism. For the past couple of
decades scholars have attempted to delineate the historical development of racism, and an important element in this
effort has been to identify foundational texts In a sense they have been searching for the smoking gun texts that
played a formative role in the development of 19th century racism. In
What seems to have been overlooked in the literature, however, is the glaring absence of the word race in his text.
The word does not occur at all in the work, and in fact, it is a word that is rarely used by Blumenbach in all his
published writings. Another overlooked fact--an obvious one--in Blumenbachs published dissertation is the word
variety occurs in the singular form in the title, not the plural.
Much of the research
Blumenbachs On the Natural Variety of Mankind is indeed a seminal text, but the reasons for this are decidedly
broader and more far-reaching than his


Situating Race in Human Social History
For most people living in the United States, Europe, and in many other

Countries around the world, race has played--and continues to play--an important role in
organizing society and in defining ones identity. As a biological concept, race seems a
natural part of human existence, something that would make sense when dealing with a
science like biology. Historically, race has been embedded in legal
documents defining a persons status in the United States, and it even


plays a role in defining citizenship in many countries. In Germany, for example, during the 1990s hundreds of
thousands of Eastern Europeans returned to Germany and could claim immediate citizenship if they demonstrated
even a fraction of German ancestry, or blood, in their roots. This massive influx of people created a significant
amount of stress on Germanys social infrastructure, since the large majority of these immigrants spoke little or no
German, and had come from cultures vastly different from Germany. Behind this repatriation is the continuing
belief that Germanness possesses a biological essentiality, and that it is possible to identify, physiologically, what it
is that makes a German a German. This biological association is in stark contrast to the count less thousands of
people who have lived in Germany for many years, who are thoroughly versed in the language and culture, but who
are still generally regarded as Auslnder, or foreigners, by other Germans.

This physiological association with national or ethnic identity plays out in the day-to-day lives of
millions of people in Germany and in countries around the world. As a teacher in a German school
in the 1980s, I had a student who was of Japanese ancestry. She was born in Germany and was
thoroughly German; she could speak no Japanese and did not overtly identify with her ethnic
heritage. Nonetheless, for other Germans she was Asiatin, an Asian, and it was inconceivable that
she be regarded, culturally or socially, as German. This played out in many ways within the school
community, and even one of my colleagues, a secondary-level teacher, was convinced he could
identify personality or psychological qualities that were distinctly Asian--and hence not German--in
the students character, and this in a person who had never been to Asia in her life! The situation is changing as
Germany and other European countries become increasingly multicultural, but this kind of phenotypic dissonance
is still an integral part of a changing German society.

As the above examples with Germany clearly demonstrate, though race is used in a biological sense, exactly what it
is denoting biologically is something that has been defined differently at various times historically and in different
societies. In reality, Germany is anything but the stereotypic tall blond nation often characterized in the mass
media, and a whirlwind trip around Germany by train is all that is necessary to notice a remarkable variety and
wide range of phenotypic characteristics that make up German society. From the short, rather sanguine and stocky
Bavarians--frequently with reddish hair, on through to the more Scandinavian type found in the north, there exists a
large variety of physiological types among Germans.

Indeed, as has been noted again and again in the German-language literature, this diversity has existed for
centuries, which is a living manifestation of the waves of migrating peoples that have populated the middle part of
Europe we now call Germany since Roman antiquity. Viewed histori cally, the range of diversity becomes even
greater, with such factors as changing diet and social or class differences also playing a notable role over time.
Until well into the 19th century, the vast majority of Europeans were rural peasants or urban poor ; only a very
small minority approached the kinds of phenotypic ideals that were characterized in the early anthropological
literature on race. It is important to keep the reality of this essential European diversity in mind when considering
the rise of the race concept in the 18th century.
The varying manner in which race is understood from country to country would seem to contradict the biological
nature of race, and behind this seeming contradiction lies the dilemma of its viability as a scientific category.
Scientific phenomena should possess general validity, and hence not vary from culture to culture and at various
times in history. Taxonomic classification in the plant and animal kingdoms, as a scientific tool, is generally valid
among scientists around the world. Uniformity in the application of race in humans is decidedly not consistent,
neither historically nor culturally. This was especially true in Europe in the 19th century, in which countries such as
France, Great Britain, and Germany had widely varying views on what constituted race, and often used it
interchangeably with what we would regard as ethnicity today.
The concept of race did not exist before the 18th century, it represents an historical phenomenon developed as an
integral part of anthropology during the European Enlightenment. It became, in fact, a key defining element in the
rise of anthropology in the 19th century. This sweeping statement may come as a surprise, and may even be
disorienting, for many people, because of the apparently biological nature of race. The qualities that make up race
are instantly recognizable in ones physical appearance, so how is it possible that such physical qualities would
possess an historical nature that at one time did not exist? If race did not exist before the 18th century, then what
was it that people noticed in others before the 18th century? What were the differences that distinguished the
groupings of peoples in various regions and countries?


An essential part of what defines humans is the unique malleability of their social nature, it is what distinguishes
humans from other animals. How humans define themselves within a community, within a grouping of other
individuals, plays a critical role in understanding much of human existence. The quality of belongingness, or
feeling oneself a part of a larger group, has been an essential feature of human history. Phenotypic characteristics,
or physiological features, have been a primary distinguishing means of identifying whether one belongs to a
community. The sense of belongingness is an essential quality in developing trust among the individuals of a
group.

Until the European Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, the vast majority of the worlds population lived close
to the land in small communities. One rarely ventured far from ones family village or town, and when they did it
was the rare or occasional trip to a larger center of commerce, usually a small regional city or the like. Village
populations remained relatively stable, and in fact most people within a community were in some way related as
cousins, aunts, or uncles, however distant, thus perpetuating a relatively small but stable gene pool. Genetic
relatedness and the social quality of belongingness worked hand-in-hand in traditional societies in identifying the
members of a community phenotypically.
These traditional patterns still exist in many parts of the world today, even in parts of modern Europe and the
United States. As a Qubcois who can trace my family lineage back to the 17th century in the same general area
along the Ottawa River, I am not unusual for a French-Canadian in having parents who are related to one another as
distant cousins. In the small New England town where I live, community and political life is still dominated by a
handful of local families who can trace their roots in the town back to early colonial times. This can frequently play
out in ways that are readily noticed by the local inhabitants in phenotypic, or physiological, ways. I still recall
vividly the conversations I had many years ago with my German mother -in-law about her local cultural geography,
in which she matter-of-factly informed me she could still identify, both through their appearance and their accent,
the inhabitants of a neighboring village that was only a couple of kilometers away.
This localized connection between phenotypic qualities and social or cultural traits is a reason why outsiders often
are not able to notice them. Just as Westerners often are unable to distinguish between Asians from different
countries, so was it impossible for me to see what my mother -in-law clearly noticed in the neighboring villagers.
This is an excellent example of how acculturation affects what we physically perceive in our environment. That
culture would affect physiology in such a way would seem counter-intuitive, and this apparent groundedness in
physical biology provides us with an important clue why it is difficult for many people to understand how race can
be an historical and cultural construct.

The immediacy of extended family-centric community life
was the predominant means of structuring ones social
identity in terms of cultural geography for most of the
world--including Europe--in the 18th century. Though
written histories tend to deal with much larger social
organizational units such as principalities or kingdoms,
most Europeans did not think in terms of these larger
geographic or political units in the 18th century. There was,
for example, no political entity known as Germany until
much later in the 19th century. Most Germans organized
their social or political geography around much smaller
local or regional units that may or may not have coincided
with a larger principality or dukedom. Typically, in middle Europe geographic features such as a valley, river, or a
mountain range would act as natural boundaries defining social groups or communities.

References:
http://www.blumenbach.info/Blumenbach.html
http://embryo.asu.edu/pages/johann-friedrich-blumenbach-1752-1840
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Friedrich_Blumenbach
http://www.understandingrace.org/history/science/early_class.html
http://www.blumenbach.info/Introduction.html



John Philippe Rushton (December 3, 1943 October 2, 2012) was a
British-born Canadian psychology professor at the University of
Western Ontario who became known to the general public during the
1980s and 1990s for research on race and intelligence, race and crime,
and other apparent racial variation. His book Race, Evolution and
Behavior (1995) is about the application of r/K selection theory to
humans.
Rushton's controversial work came under attack within the scientific
community for the quality of the research, and allegations that it
was racist. From 2002 he was head of the Pioneer Fund, a research
foundation accused of being racist.
Rushton was a Fellow of the American, British, and Canadian
Psychological Associations
[citation needed]
and onetime Fellow of the John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Application of r/K selection theory to race
Rushton's book Race, Evolution, and Behavior (1995) uses r/K selection theory to explain how East Asians consistently
average high, blacks low, and whites in the middle on an evolutionary scale of characteristics indicative of nurturing
behavior. He first published this theory in 1984. Rushton argues that East Asians and their descendants average a larger
brain size, greater intelligence, more sexual restraint, slower rates of maturation, and greater law abidingness and social
organization than do Europeans and their descendants, who average higher scores on these dimensions than Africans and
their descendants. He theorizes that r/K selection theory explains these differences. Rushton's application of r/K selection
theory to explain differences among racial groups has been widely criticised. One of his many critics is the evolutionary
biologistJoseph L. Graves, who has done extensive testing of the r/K selection theory with species of Drosophila flies.
Graves argues that not only is r/K selection theory considered to be virtually useless when applied to human life history
evolution, but Rushton does not apply the theory correctly, and displays a lack of understanding of evolutionary theory in
general. Graves also says that Rushton misrepresented the sources for the biological data he gathered in support of his
hypothesis, and that much of his social science data was collected by dubious means. Other scholars have argued against
Rushton's hypothesis on the basis that the concept of race is not supported by genetic evidence about the diversity of
human populations, and that his research was based on folk taxonomies. A number of later studies by Rushton and other
researchers have argued that there is empirical support for the theory. Psychologist David P. Barash notes that r- and K-
selection may have some validity when considering the so-called demographic transition, whereby economic development
characteristically leads to reduced family size and other K traits. "But this is a pan-human phenomenon, a flexible,
adaptive response to changed environmental conditions...Rushton wields r- and K-selection as a Procrustean bed, doing
what he can to make the available data fit[...]. Bad science and virulent racial prejudice drip like pus from nearly every
page of this despicable book."
J. Philippe Rushton
(an extract from a much longer review)
Although independent researchers have repeatedly confirmed: (1) The geographical distribution of intelligence, (2), the
relationship between intelligence and brain size, (3), the geographical distribution of brain size, and (4), the heritability of
intelligence, Diamond, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, is like a composite of the three wise
monkeys and does not want to see, hear, or say anything about these topics. Therefore, I will briefly summarize them.
Readers seeking a more extensive summary can consult The Bell Curve, and for a complete discussion of how brain size
and IQ explain much of human behavior and are in turn explained by human evolution, see my Race, Evolution, and
Behavior.
1. The geographical distribution of intelligence. One hundred years of research has established that East Asians and
Europeans average higher IQs than do Africans. East Asians, measured in North America and in Pacific Rim countries,
typically average IQs in the range of 101 to 111. Caucasoid populations in North America, Europe, and Australasia
typically average IQs from 85 to 115 with an overall mean of 100. African populations living south of the Sahara, in


North America, in the Caribbean, and in Britain typically have mean IQs from 70 to 90 (see Lynn, 1997, for a
comprehensive review).
Parallel differences are found on relatively culture-free tests such as speed of decision making. All children can perform
the task in less than one second, but children with higher IQ scores perform faster than do those with lower scores. Asian
children in Hong Kong and Japan average faster than do European children from Britain and Ireland, who in turn average
faster than do African children from South Africa. This same pattern of racial differences is also found in California.
2. The relationship between intelligence and brain size. Diamond neglects to mention any of the remarkable discoveries
made during the 1990's "decade of the brain" using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Such MRI studies, which
construct three-dimensional models of the brain in vivo, show a correlation of about 0.40 between brain size and IQ, as
replicable a set of results as can be found in the social and behavioral sciences. The first MRI/IQ studies were published in
the late 1980's and early 1990's in leading, refereed, mainstream journals like Intelligence (Willerman et al., 1991) and the
American Journal of Psychiatry (Andreasen et al., 1993).
3. The parallel geographical distribution of brain size. Racial differences in brain size have been established recently using
wet brain weight at autopsy, volume of empty skulls using filler, and volume estimated from head sizes. Using
endocranial volume, for example, Beals et al. (1984, p. 307, Table 5) analyzed about 20,000 skulls from around the world.
East Asians averaged 1,415 cm3 (SD = 51), Europeans averaged 1,362 cm3 (SD = 35), and Africans averaged 1,268 cm3
(SD = 85). Using external head measures to calculate cranial capacities, Rushton (1992) analyzed a stratified random
sample of 6,325 U.S. Army personnel measured in 1988 for fitting helmets and found that Asian Americans averaged
1,416 cm3 (SD = 104 cm3), European Americans 1,380 cm3 (SD = 92), and African Americans 1,359 cm3 (SD = 95).
Moreover, a recent MRI study found that people of African and Caribbean background averaged a smaller brain volume
than did those of European background (Harvey, Persaud, Ron, Baker & Murray, 1994).
Contrary to purely environmental theories, these racial differences in brain size show up early in life. Data from the U.S.
National Collaborative Perinatal Project on 35,000 children found that Asian children average a larger head perimeter at
birth than do White children who average a larger head perimeter than do Black children, even though, at age seven,
Asian children average smaller body size (and Africans larger body size) than do Europeans. Further, head perimeter at
seven years correlates with IQ at age seven in all three racial groups (see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for review).
4. The heritability of intelligence. As discussed in The Bell Curve and Race, Evolution, and Behavior, the heritability of
intelligence is now well established from numerous adoption, twin, and family studies. Particularly noteworthy are the
heritabilities of around 80% found in adult twins reared apart (Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, Segal & Tellegen, 1990).
Moderate to substantial genetic influence on IQ has also been found in studies of non-Whites, including African
Americans and Japanese. Even the most critical of meta-analyses find IQ about 50% heritable (Devlin, Daniels & Roeder,
1997).
Transracial adoption studies suggest a genetic contribution to the between-group differences. Studies of Korean and
Vietnamese children adopted into White American and White Belgian homes show that, although as babies many had
been hospitalized for malnutrition, they grew to excel in academic ability with IQs 10 points or more higher than their
adoptive national norms (Frydman & Lynn, 1989). By contrast, Weinberg, Scarr and Waldman (1992) found that at age
17, Black and Mixed-Race children adopted into White middle-class families performed at a lower level than the White
siblings with whom they had been raised.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton
http://danny.oz.au/communities/anthro-l/debates/race-iq/
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1996reviewRushton.pdf




Cultural Anthropology

Cultural anthropology is a major division of anthropology that deals with the
study of culture in all its aspects and that uses the methods, concepts, and data of
archaeology, ethnography and ethnology, folklore, and linguistics in its
descriptions and analyses of the diverse peoples of the world.
Modern cultural anthropology as a field of research has its roots in the Age of
Discovery, when technologically advanced European cultures came into
extended contact with various "traditional" cultures, which for the most part the
Europeans grouped indiscriminately under the general rubrics "savage" or
"primitive." By the mid-19th century, such questions as the origins of the world's
diverse cultures and peoples and their languages had become matters of great
interest in western Europe.
The concept of evolution, as formally proposed by Charles Darwin with the
publication in 1859 of The Origin of Species, lent considerable impetus to this
research into the development of societies and cultures over time.



Anthropology was dominated in the latter 19th century by a linear conception of history, in which all human groups were said to pass
through specified stages of cultural evolution, from a state of "savagery" to "barbarism" and finally to that of "civilized man" (i.e.,
western European man).
At the onset of the 20th century, the strong cultural biases of the early western European and North American anthropologists were
gradually discarded in favour of a more pluralistic, relativistic outlook in which each human culture was viewed as a unique product of
physical environment, cultural contacts, and other divergent factors.
Out of this orientation came a new emphasis on empirical data, fieldwork, and hard evidence of human behaviour and social
organization within a given cultural environment. The prime exemplar of this approach was a German-born American, Franz Boas,
known as the founder of the culture history school of anthropology.
Boas and his followers--notably, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Edward Sapir - dominated American anthropology throughout
much of the 20th century. The culture history school was rooted in a functionalist approach to culture materials and sought an
expression of unity between the various patterns, traits, and customs within a particular culture.
Meanwhile, in France, Marcel Mauss, founder of the Institute of Ethnology of the University of Paris, studied human societies as total
systems, self-regulating and adaptive to changing circumstances in ways designed to preserve the integrity of the system. Mauss
exerted considerable influence over such disparate figures as Claude Lvi-Strauss in France and Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R.
Radcliffe-Brown in England.
While Malinowski went on to pursue a strictly functionalist approach, Radcliffe-Brown and Levi-Strauss developed the principles of
structuralism. The functionalists asserted that the only valid method of analyzing social phenomena was to define the function they
performed in a society.
The structuralists, by contrast, sought to identify a system or structure underlying the broad spectrum of social phenomena in
particular cultures, a system of which the members of a society maintain only a dim awareness through the use of myths and symbols.
Studies of Southwest American Indian groups in the 1930s by Ruth Benedict marked the emergence of the subdiscipline of cultural
anthropology known as cultural psychology.
Benedict proposed that cultures in their slow development imposed a unique "psychological set" on their members, who interpreted
reality along lines oriented by the culture, regardless of environmental factors.
The interrelation of culture and personality, as exemplified in the cultural value-systems of both traditional and modern societies, has
become the subject of extensive research.

In their fieldwork, early 20th-century cultural anthropologists produced many studies of family life and structure, marriage, kinship
and local grouping, and magic and witchcraft.
During the second half of the century, while kinship studies remained a central concern, social status and power attracted more
attention as researchers investigated the political and legal systems of different societies from an anthropological standpoint. More
serious attention was paid to religious ideas and rituals as well.
Interest shifted from African peoples, who had occupied cultural anthropologists for a quarter of a century, to peoples in India,
Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Ocean islands.
The analysis of social change became a prominent area of research in the decades after World War II as many Third World countries
undertook programs of economic development and industrialization. Since then, the application of computers has made possible a
much greater use of quantitative data, as in studies of family and domestic group relations, marriage, divorce, and economic
transactions.